No, I didn’t go out to the lake for more photos, and it sure isn’t happening today as the side effects from Tropical Storm Ophelia have produced rain for about sixteen hours straight. I just realized that some of the photos from that last outing didn’t really fit in with the others (of which there are still plenty,) so I broke them off. Someone once told me raptors and arachnids don’t mix, and I’ve always remembered that sage advice. Who said it, I haven’t the faintest…
As I was walking along the lakeshore, there was lots of movement from the sand right near the water’s edge, quick but tiny – so small I had a hard time making out what they were from a standing position. Pausing and looking carefully, I eventually determined that some of them, at least, were tiny spiders, and I took a moment to snag a few frames.
I’m calling this a wolf spider (Lycosidae,) but that’s based largely on the body structure because I couldn’t see the eyes well enough – I doubt the overall leg spread topped six millimeters. I wasn’t inclined to get out the macro lens and get wet scrambling around on my hands and knees for the shot, plus I was still watching for raptors, so this was with the 150-600mm; I had to back off a little to get into the short focus range of 2.5 meters. Not bad for that, really.
A little later on, I’d taken a seat on a small rise, still sandy but dry, and noticed another spider, about twice the size, scampering along near me with her egg sac. This time I went ahead and affixed the Mamiya 80mm macro, but was shooting handheld without supplemental lighting.
Several of the spider species carry around their egg sacs attached to their spinnerets – this one might have been 12 mm or so in spread, so I’m trying to imagine how small the spiderlings are when hatched. With that eye pattern, I’m fairly confident this is a wolf spider, and they typically carry their young around on their abdomens for a while after hatching, though without strong magnification I’d never know it. Maybe I should plan a session looking for things like this…
Since I was shooting in available light and it was getting on towards sunset, this was wide open at f4, and is actually a ‘stack’ of two frames: one had the abdomen sharp, one the cephalothorax. Where would we be without Photoshop, or in this case, GIMP? Well, shooting with the macro flash unit at f16 and doing an even better job, really.
And finally,
I knew the moon would be visible, and eventually located it among the scattered clouds. I waited for some to pass, and snapped this at the right moment, giving me the impression of a cannonball in flight. And now you can’t unsee that either.